A poll of over 500 IT professionals has found that the industry is virtually split in two over whether it is right for a British man to be extradited to the USA for allegedly breaking into Pentagon and NASA computers.

Gary McKinnon, a self-confessed computer enthusiast from North London, is alleged to have hacked into computers belonging to the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA. British Home Secretary, John Reid, has this week signed the order approving the extradition.

In an online poll (565 respondents) conducted by Sophos, 52 per cent said that McKinnon should not be extradited, while 48 per cent said it was correct for him to face a US court.

"It's fascinating to see how the IT community is split down the middle regarding Gary McKinnon. Many have expressed sympathy with his plight and think the British authorities have let him down by agreeing to extradite him to the States," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "This is in marked difference to the tough reaction we normally hear from the public when alleged virus writers and hackers are making the headlines. Hackers should take heed of the McKinnon case, and think carefully about their actions if they don't want a one-way ticket to an American court."

40-year-old McKinnon claims that he did not break into the networks with malicious intent, but to uncover confidential information about anti-gravity propulsion systems and extraterrestrial technology which he believed the authorities were hiding from the public.

McKinnon has been leading a high profile campaign to avoid extradition, demanding that the US authorities should provide evidence of his supposed crimes and damage caused to the UK court, and claiming that he could be sent to the US military camp at Guantanamo Bay. His campaign has been supported by many others in the hacking community. McKinnon says that he was caught while viewing an image of what he believed to be a UFO on a NASA computer. He has two weeks to appeal against the Home Secretary's decision.

[The issue of extradition of certain nationals to foreign jurisdictions is a sticky one, particularly in the case of the USA perhaps, where this street is decidedly one-way. Can you really expect from citizens in any country (apart from the US) that they behave in a way so as to not violate US legislation, by accident or design? Of course you can't. Doing so would make a mockery of national parliaments with legislative powers to set out the rules applicable in a particular territory.

Citizens must be able to rely on the 'certainty of law', that if they behave legally in the country they belong to and live in, they will not be prosecuted. They must also be able to rely on the law to guide them to legal behaviour, a problematic proposition under common law systems but this is a different issue. Being extradited to stand trial in a foreign jurisdiction amounts to arbitrary prosecution, violating basic human rights.

Human rights are rapidly being undermined in 'Western democracies', and extraditions of nationals between European jurisdictions is but one example, undermining the basic principle of 'fair trial'. How can you give someone a fair trial in a country whose legislation they don't know and in a language they don't understand? With great difficulty if at all. It is an argument for trying European people in other European jurisdictions that European legislation is to a large extent coordinated. While this may be true, a huge bulk of legislation is not the same throughout Europe, and jurisprudence is certainly not sufficiently similar to assure fair trials.

When we extend this extradition principle to sending European citizens to countries outside Europe to stand trial we are in uncomfortably dangerous territory, in effect saying that securing 'our' people a fair trial is not a priority or even an important consideration. This is an immoral and untenable stance, and for this reason alone McKinnon should not be extradited, in effect banished, to the USA - whether he is a bad cracker or not. If he has violated e.g. the CMA he should stand trial for this offence here in the UK. If he hasn't violated any UK law he should of course not stand trial at all. US legislation should have no significance whatsoever in guiding the behaviour of non-US citizens! --Ed].

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www.sophos.com/

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